


Neil Perry and how to live without him

by traumaa



Category: Dead Poets Society (1989)
Genre: Angst, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Todd Anderson/Neil Perry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-11
Updated: 2020-06-11
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:49:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24664894
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traumaa/pseuds/traumaa
Summary: Todd Anderson, fifteen years after the death of Neil.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	Neil Perry and how to live without him

Fifteen years.

Todd stared at his reflection in the bathroom mirror.

Fifteen years.

He checked the time. Fourteen years, three hundred and sixty-four days and a few hours, give or take. Todd ran a hand through his hair, it was greasy again, he could really use a shave too. He wasn’t looking great and he knew it, somehow knowing and motivation to change don’t go hand in hand.

‘It’s normal, really, to feel worse around this time of year,’ his therapist had assured him. The others said pretty much the same. Todd wondered why each acted as if this was revolutionary information, and who they thought they were helping with it. He didn’t care that his feelings were ‘understandable’ or ‘normal’, he wanted them to be gone.

With a sigh, he turned the tap off and left the bathroom. His therapist had recommended getting out of the house, so he thought he may as well give it a try. He knew it wouldn’t help, but at least he’d have something to say in their next meeting.

Todd’s expression was vacant, he shrugged on a coat and locked his door behind him. Once he left the apartment building, he shoved his hands deep into his pockets, New York winters were cold. Or he was trying to make himself small. Who knows?

New York. Neil would have loved it.

‘The spirit,’ he’d say. ‘There’s vitality in the air, Todd!’ Then he’d smile, Todd tried to imagine it, he’d look a little older, but his smile would still be contagious, still breathtaking. God, New York City would forever mourn the emptiness where Neil Perry should be.

Todd swallowed the lump forming in his throat, this walk was to trick his therapist into thinking he was doing well, not to cry in public. He tried to redirect his attention to the world around him. The sky was dull. There was an old man sitting alone on a bench. A couple with a child passed him. They looked happy. 

Todd might have hated them, had they passed him a few years ago.

He’d tried the whole dating thing and for some reason it never worked.

'You're so distant, Todd.' 

'I keep trying to get through to you.'

'Why don't you just let me in?'

After years of thinking he needed to find the right person he realized that the problem was he already had, and that person hadn’t stuck around for him. Todd was still ashamed of the period of resentment that followed. 

_Why? Why Neil? Why couldn’t you have just stayed for me? And if that was too much, why did you have to make me fall in love with you?_

Todd couldn’t keep that up for long, though. Neil didn’t owe him anything. He would never know how his promise to take care of him stuck in his mind everyday. He would never know how much Todd wished he'd kept it. 

He imagined Neil’s reaction to a confession a lot. Most of the time Neil laughed in his face. On the off chance he felt the same way? Well, Todd liked to think about that outcome even less. There was more to miss that way. 

So, Todd could blame Neil all he wanted but, really, it wasn’t anyone’s fault but his own, if Neil was still alive, Todd knew that he would simply silently watch him fall in love with someone else. He was, at his core, a coward. Even in his hypotheticals. 

He rounded a corner and left the park he was in for a bustling street. 

‘Time heals.’

That was something he’d heard a lot. Said sympathetically at the funeral and then reiterated until it became a mantra, more like a default than something that had any meaning.

Time heals what exactly? There was nothing there to heal, and to Todd, it seemed like no time had passed at all. No matter where he was or who he was with, it was always that morning.

‘Todd, Todd?’ Charlie’s voice echoed in his mind.

‘What is it?’ He had been annoyed, it was early in the morning. 

‘Neil’s dead.’ Oh. 

Nothing could compare to the way his blood went cold. The sudden emptiness that followed. 

It's strange how fast everything can change. Todd would give anything to go back to when he was just a teenager being woken up too early. 

His therapist tried to dissect that moment often, but Todd felt so attached to it, it felt too much to let someone else into it. Then she would try to get him to tell her how it felt. How could he ever describe it? Then she'd give in and ask how he felt about it now. 

He told her the standard 'it's like there's a hole in my heart.'

But it wasn't a hole in his heart. It was more like a crack in the universe. It was a whole life that went unlived. Todd and Neil living in New York together, going to Columbia or Harvard or wherever they wanted. Neil letting go of his father and becoming an actor, Todd feeling like he was worth something for once. 

Sometimes he wondered where him grieving Neil stopped and him romanticizing an impossible life started. 

Todd stopped walking halfway across the Manhattan Bridge. Bridges tended to remind him of his birthday, which he hadn't bothered to celebrate in years. 

He remembered that night. When his parents had gotten him the same desk set twice. He tried not to be upset about it, it was still a gift after all. Neil found him sitting on the bridge, he could still hear how soft his voice sounded when he wished him a happy birthday. Then of course, him suggesting that the desk set could fly.

Destroying that stupid thing felt so freeing. Todd looked over the edge of the bridge, then up at the sky.

That was it. Neil made him feel free. 

He smiled. 

In the most mundane ways, in the most important ways. Todd just wanted to feel free again. 

And then, he jumped.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm sorry, percy.


End file.
